Universe Creation 101

 ep004_TimWright: Download

Another podcast! Yay! At this rate I might even crack three podcasts a year. hehe. Joking aside, I’m excited about our guest today. UK digital writer Tim Wright shares his vast experience with over a decade with online interactive drama and more recently multiplatform storytelling. Below is a time guide showing you topics Tim touches on a certain points. Everything Tim (and I) refer to is in the show notes.

00.00: Online Caroline
11.10: Lonely Girl 15
13.18: closure
15.58: Balancing world creation and fan fiction
19.56: Mount Kristos
25.33: The Search of Oldton
39.32: Multiplatform storytelling
52.09: Scaling
Happiness…

Show notes:

• Jill Walker-Rettberg’s essay: ‘How I was played by Online Caroline’
• Rob Bevan
• MindGym
• Jenny Cam
• Online Caroline
• XPT (fictional company)
• Richardson’s Pamela
• Lonely Girl 15
• Mount Kristos
• Kate Modern
• You Sucjk at Photoshop
• In Search of Oldton
• Writers for the Future
• trAce Online Writing Centre
• Sue Thomas
• Multiplatform Storytelling for Screenwriters @ 01ZERO-ONE
• Ted
• The Lost Ring ‘Running of the Labyrinth’ instructions
• Jane McGonigal’s SXSW presentation: Alternate Realities (PPT at SlideShare)

More info about Tim:

• Tim Wright’s blog
• XPT (Wright & Bevan’s company)

Other interviews conducted at UC101:

• Lance Weiler (video)
• Evan Jones (audio and text transcript)

Postscript:
Sorry about the technical difficulties with the podcast. The video editing software I use doesn’t let me do edits to the second, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get both myself and the interviewer at the same sound level. Tim teases me about being in a black room (it was midnight for me!), and being close to the screen with bad lighting. What can I say, I’m an interactive drama cliche. I’ll have to increase the drama with a call to save the world or something.

Well, not quite ‘death’ but an indefinite hiatus. I’m powering down this blog for a few reasons, one of which is my desire to finish my PhD. I’ve tried for the last year and a half to do PhD writing and work and this blog, but found the mindsets are somewhat incompatable. I’ve decided therefore to close this blog down. I don’t know if I’ll bring it up again and if I do when, or whether I’ll start another one. But I do know that I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging here these past few years. I have especially enjoyed meeting many of you because of the blog, and seeing ‘cross-media’ (etc) projects become ubiquitous. Thankfully, the area has alot more people looking at it now, from alot of different perspectives. Here are some blogs that will keep you informed:

• Networked Performance: research blog that posts about emerging network-enabled practice;
• You can read and listen to news about alternate reality games and just about any online extension of a film, TV or book property on the ARGNet blog and ARG Netcast (podcast);
• Henry Jenkins personal blog and the Convergence Culture Consortium blog has lots of goodies from a media studies perspective about ‘transmedia storytelling’ and ‘convergence culture’ in general;
• DeMontfort University share their investigations into what they term ’Transliteracy’ at their PART blog;
• Jeff Gomez, the CEO of Starlight Runner and longtime practitioner of ‘trans-media’ projects, is now blogging regularly about his insights and experience over at the Producers Guild of America blog;
• Monique de Haas blogs about ‘crossmedia communication’ occasionally;
• Tony Walsh posts semi-regularly on alternate reality games;
• Valentina Rao blogs about crossmedia games and anything related to that at Games Across Media, and will hopefully be starting her PhD on the subject soon;
• Johnathan Gray, Derek Johnson and Ivan Askwith are blogging about everything around TV and film at The Extratextuals;
• Crossmedia Dialog is a group blog that post regularly on crossmedia in Amsterdam and worldwide;
• Faris Yakob, Adam Crowe blog about ‘transmedia planning’ and other changes to the marketing industry;
• Jak Boumans posts every single day about stuff happening in the Netherlands and worldwide at Buziaulane; 
• Max Giovognoli runs everything to do with cross-media in Italy;
• MobileCrossMedia is a blog that looks at the different ways mobile phones can network with different devices and the real world;
• If you don’t already get it, the Convergence Newsletter has regular interesting newsletters about convergence in journalism and has been my favourite newsletter for the past few years;

I don’t plan to be blogging here about events or publications I’m involved in, instead I’ll pop them on my bio site. But for now, here are some events I’m involved with, in the not-too-distant-future:

• I’ll be on the ‘expert panel’ with Mark McCrindle and Tim Flattery at Mitchell Communications Group ’s launch of ‘While You Weren’t Watching’, a documentary on changes to branded entertainment etc in which I was interviewed. The launch is private but the documentary will be put online I believe in Nov; 
• I have my own panel on ‘Designing, Experiencing and Analysing Games in the Age of Integration’, and I am a panelist in Darren Toft’s panel on ‘What Happened to New Media Art?’ at the Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment in Dec;
• I’ll be on the panel on ‘Cyber-Born Film’ at Megan Spencer’s Destination Festival (or DestFest) in Dec;
• In Jan 08, I’ll be a guest lecturer again for Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media, De Montfort University, UK;
• In Feb 08, my essay on ‘Tiering in Alternate Reality Games’ will be published in the special issue of Convergence edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze.

For now though, I will continue to be online in a different way. I’ve started a podcast, a podcast where I’ll interview talented people working in this area. My ‘birth’ podcast is a bit awkward, but the second is a great one: an interview with Stitch Media’s Evan Jones. At the site, I also provide sneak preview information about Stitch Media’s latest project.

That is it for me here, thankyou all for sharing this time with me. I’ll see you on the other side of my PhD.

Check it out: www.ChristyDena.com  

Check it out: www.UniverseCreation101.com

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Sheffield International Documentary Festival are pleased to issue a call for proposals for a new cross-media competition called the CROSS-MEDIA CHALLENGE.

The CROSS-MEDIA CHALLENGE is a co-production competition for innovative, interactive, socially engaged content with applications for mobile and broadband. It will award one producer a $10,500CAD/£5,000 co-production development deal with the NFB.

ABOUT THE CHALLENGE
Inspired by the NFB’s legendary Challenge for Change program of community filmmaking, today’s NFB is adapting the adage “think globally, act locally” to develop socially engaged media projects relating to issues such as the protection of the environment, health care, human rights, poverty and violence against women.

How can we inspire an exchange of story-telling practices among diverse communities? How can we use media creatively to foster an international dialogue on issues that have local roots? How can we unleash the creative talents of marginal voices and communities and make them heard?

We are interested in projects that use the versatility, mobility and borderless nature of new platforms to enable communities to talk to each other. Projects must be documentary based.

Eligible projects must be cross-platform and multi-platform involving the best features of each medium to ensure maximum audience participation. Projects should take full advantage of the range of new platforms, with particular emphasis on interactive, mobile and on-line. Projects must demonstrate direct contact and interaction with communities as part of the development plan.

More info at: http://www.nfb.ca/about/news.php?id=1554

In October 2007, Mediamatic will be running a workshop on ‘Games in Crossmedia’:

Virtual worlds such as Second Life are gaining popularity fast - they are places for acting out fantasies, but also for film making and telling stories. Techniques like machinima offer new possibilities for creating films and television in the 3D worlds of popular computer games - as for instance the BBC and Endemol are doing. There is a huge window of opportunity for media makers interested in the collaboration and exchange between games and other kinds of media.

In this 5-day workshop, Mediamatic will bring professional media makers, producers, broadcasters and production companies up-to-date on game culture and will provide makers with the tools to incorporate game aspects in crossmedia projects. [...]

During the workshop, participants will build a prototype of their crossmedia project and develop and visualize its user-scenarios. Participants will learn the basic principles of creating machinima, designing 3D game spaces and developing game play and game rules. Participants will also learn about trends in game culture such as massive multi-player games and new kinds of game interfaces like the Nintendo Wii. Besides this, participants will be updated on the new web culture of creating, matching and sharing user-generated content, which is very influential in game culture. Through the course of the workshop many practical examples of crossmedia projects which feature game technology such as Historic Battles (BBC), and Bamzooki (BBC), Peter Greenaway’s Tulse Luper Suitcases and Endemol’s Second Life projects, will be viewed and analyzed.

Check it out: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-17509-en.html

The Brisband chapter of the IGDA have invited me to give a talk and workshop next week in Queensland:

GAME_ON:

talk and workshop- tues 5 june, 5-7pm @ KGUV Community Hub, Carraway St, Kelvin Grove

‘Alternate Reality Games: Multi-Platform & Multi-World Design’

In this talk Christy Dena will provide an overview of the pervasive gaming genre of ‘alternate reality games’. These games use multiple platforms, have a high degree of narrative and gameplay and an immersive aesthetic that works towards being as indistinguishable from reality as possible.

They are commissioned by major corporations, created by independents and employed in education and training. After an overview of the various techniques used, the session will move into a workshop where an ARG schema will be created in 1 hour.

more information, future events and live links: http://www.igda.org/brisbane/game_on_get_game.html

The Digital Communication and Culture Department at the University of Sydney (which is the Uni where I’m doing my PhD) invited me to give a lecture to their Digital Cultures students. Tomorrow I’ll be giving the talk titled Multi-Platform Art versus Commodity Intertexts. I’ll present on the different approaches to cross-media/transmedia/multi-platform in mass-entertainment, independent art, gaming, literature and so on. I’ll also look at how this has changed over time (I go back a few decades) and how the theory around these forms has changed too. Looking forward to it!

This is definitely a time of monocle popping for me. I have just discovered a course dedicated to ‘transmedia story creation’. It is a core postgraduate subject in the Visual Language and Interactive Media MFA in Digital Media at the University of Central Florida. Dr Rudy McDaniel runs the course, which is described in the syllabus as follows:

In this class, we will explore the form and function of narrative. Using a variety of methodological frameworks gathered from fields as diverse as folklore, cultural studies, literature, computer science, film studies, media studies, and creative writing, we will immerse ourselves in both the production and consumption of narratives in a critical fashion. Using a combined approach of narrative analysis, critique, and creation, we will learn to appreciate stories – expressed across a variety of media – as rich encapsulations of human experience and as valuable vehicles for artistic and intellectual expression.

I’ve had some quick contact with Rudy and the course is an excellent mix of analysis (employing a fine range of fields) and practice. The course focuses, however, on the adaptation of a story in different media, rather than the expansion of narrative in different media. Both are important, because you cannot understand the second without the first. This missing element of expansion despite the course being called ‘transmedia story creation’ is completely understandable though. There is very little knowledge about this expansive phenomena in narratology (I plan to change that!), and the term ‘transmedia’ is not field-agnostic. Media theorist Henry Jenkins’s term ‘transmedia storytelling’ is different to the narratological meaning of transmedial narrative. Jenkins employs the term transmedia to describe expansion across media, narratologists employ transmedia to describe the study of media-specific narrative traits. There is a clash of semantics here. I thoroughly enjoy this diversity of meaning however. It helps me gain a greater understanding of the area and just proves that we really are in an age of diversity.

I am so thrilled to see the course that Rudy is running. It is quite a well-designed exercise in the theoretical and practical exploration of narrative and media. I’m even more thrilled that we all know about each other now, so the conversation (and expansion of ideas) can continue.

Check out: Transmedia Story Creation blog

[N.B.: Just saw the latest assignment and it does include a transmedia story exercise! Wohoo!]

In the Netherlands, you can now get an Master of Business Administration in Cross Media Experience! From what I can understand of the website, it looks like you learn cross media marketing, strategy, production, creative projects, organisational infrastructure and international cross media business. The people seem like they will be well informed:

• Lemniscaat School of Management
• De Media Academie
• Conclusion 
• Justus Verkerk, FCCE
• Mark Giesbers, TALPA Digital
• Joris van Heukelom, KPN Media & TV
• Max Christern, PCM Uitgevers
• Cilesta van Doorn, Tele2/ Versatel
• Han Gerrits, Hoogleraar nieuwe media VU, Amsterdam New Media Institute
• Joris Tinbergen, Google
• Quintin Schevemels, Telegraaf Media Groep

Wow! Wish I could read the curriculum.

Check it out: www.crossmediamba.nl

The 2007 Developing Interactive Narrative Content Seminar run by sagasnet is currently in play.

During this Developing Interactive Narrative Content Seminar pre-selected interactive narrative projects in development (no limitation on media, genre or target audience) will be provided in parallel with high-profile face-to-face consulting sessions (on financing, project management, marketing, story structure, game play…). Consultants will be chosen according to the needs of the selected projects.

The experts they have providing advice are:

| Frank Boyd | Greg Childs | Christophe Erbes | Chris Hales | Sibylle Kurz | Raimo Lang | Peter Olaf Looms | Mark Stephen Meados | Mark Ollila | Michel Rüger | Richard Rouse III | Nathan Shedroff | Lee Sheldon | Inga von Staden | Teut Weidemann | Ingo Wolf |

And here are some of the projects (I’ve picked out the ones that interest me):

Kai Graebner, Soap Blog
– online extension of a TV soap, with a holistic storytelling approach combining linear and interactive narration.

Douglas Grant, Steppin’ Out
– an interactive film in which your on-the-fly navigation of the narrative reveals who’s fooling who (including you) - or does it?

John Griffith, Treasure Hunt
– a fun-filled learning experience, where participants interact with each other, the physical world and a multimedia interface (a cross-media adventure activity).

Mark Grindle/Minttu Mantynen, Wildlife
– an episodic series of downloadable interactive stories of eleven-year old Milie McGowan and her amazing ability to transform herself into wild animals.

Leidi Haaijer, … What does it take to make a choice …
– a screenplay on reality and the dream of love; evolving through chat, web cam, e-mail, telephone and sms.

Catherine Kahn/ Trond Morten Kristensen, Heidi
– a multi-platform scifi drama exploring the meeting point between the individuality of the gaming world and a filmatic experience of the little screen on the go.

Mitja Kostomaj, Spinning Top Adventures
– a story spinning your mind, an ambient interactive storybook moving your body: a set of edutainment games using the body to help children in their motor, emotional and intellectual development.

Phillip Prager, Polyalphabet
– an interactive installation based on an associative, recombinant narrative, transforming an aleatoric text by John Cage.

Check out: http://www.sagasnet.de/

Recently I gave a talk for the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, Leicester. It is ”designed for writers interested in experimenting with new formats and exploring the potential of new technologies in their writing” and run by “Professor Sue Thomas, writer and former Artistic Director of the trAce Online Writing Centre, and Kate Pullinger, acclaimed novelist and new media writer”. I was in esteemed company too, with other guest lecturers including legends such as Howard Rheingold, Carolyn Handler Miller, Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink (M.D. Coverley), Randy Adams, Rita Raley, Alan Sondheim and Maurice Suckling. Wow!

I didn’t travel there — the whole course is online. Instead, I recorded an audio lecture and created a matching powerpoint and then spent the next week talking with the students in the forum. In the talk ‘A New Total Work of Art?’ I spoke about…you guessed it cross-media entertainment (insert any term you use). I went through highlights of the theoretical and creative history of cross-media since oral culture. The creative component covered cross-media works from the commercial, independent, artistic, narrative, game and marketing sectors. The theory was a mix of theories based on certain artforms and from different fields: narratology, media studies etc. I then gave a brief introduction to some of the design issues/gave guidance on designing cross-media worlds.

It was sooo good to talk about these ideas with writers and to chat for a few days afterwards. The hot topic in particular was the nature of art in the commercial realm. This is of course an issue for many and as a researcher and creator in the area, I have alot to say about it. I do not support the idea that art and commerce exist in a dichotomy, nor that any intermingling immediately improves or depletes a project. I look at what works and what doesn’t and why. 

I’m not going to say anymore as I don’t like discussing my research theories in the blog format. But I just wanted to share how much I enjoyed getting down to the nitty gritty of cross-media. Often I give talks for industry or academia and walk away. Granted, academics follow up with related theories, and industry folk want that information on tap in the form of consulting. But getting the chance to have a continued conversation over a week with people who are really thinking about it was delightful.